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Some writers and artists draw inspiration from seeing a beautiful landscape, staring at a statuesque model or listening to a well-crafted anecdote. Not Art Spiegelman. Disaster is his muse. In his most famous work, the graphic novel Maus , the disaster was the Holocaust. The story told of his parents' struggles throughout the Shoah, with Jews depicted as mice and...

The Berlin wall of sound may provide the quintessential centerpiece for the "Jewish American" series. "Irving Berlin," says David Grubin, its exec-in-charge, "is a perfect example" of what the series attempts to show. "He was Jewish down to his toenails. Yet here is someone who wrote some of the best known Christmas songs ('White Christmas') and was so assimilated into...

Jerusalem No one is happier about the renovations under way at Israel's largest and most famous museum than the security guards at the nearby Bible Lands Museum. They say that every day, dozens of first-time visitors looking for the Israel Museum pass through the Bible Museum security gates before realizing their mistake. Up to now, the fabulous, 20-acre, half-million-artifact collection...

If all the world's a circle, include Philadelphia as a pit stop on the way to "Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel," a new exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. The display conveys the story of a little-known aspect of American carousel history and its connection to Jewish visual culture, including the...

Museums are the primary stewards of collections. They exhibit them, care for them, grow them. Over time, as collections get bigger, museums often find themselves out of space, longing for a way to burst out of their architectural footprint. Very often, the process of expansion is met with community opposition. In New York, three major museums have been in running...